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At an all-hands meeting at Twitter (TWTR) on June 16, its prospective owner, Elon Musk, reportedly called free speech "essential." The very next day, reports emerged that the Tesla CEO fired three employees of his other company, SpaceX, after they helped distribute an open letter criticizing his behavior.

The decision by Musk doesn't just highlight his thin skin: It also reflects the fact that being a self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" just isn't practical. While Musk has said he'd make free speech a key part of Twitter if his planned $44 billion deal to buy it actually goes through, most experts agree that tech platforms need at least some regulation.

"There are plenty of individuals on social networks who state this because they want their version of the truth to be shared widely," American University communications expert Jason Mollica tells Yahoo Finance. "Freedom of speech is never absolute, though. Real freedom has rules and regulations so that people do not abuse it."

Social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, and most famously, Facebook are rife with disinformation and misinformation, even when those sites do have rules about what can and can't be posted. There have been real-life consequences and information crises that have emerged from the news that's spread on these sites, from the Cambridge Analytica data breach to the viral Pizzagate conspiracy.

"This idea of unfettered free speech is really disconnected. It's this kind of libertarian ideal that's disconnected from how markets actually function," said Kevin Esterling, a professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside.

Elon Musk and Thomas Jefferson actually have something in common

Musk's conception of free speech doesn't fully account for — or even understand — highly monetized misinformation that exists on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This unambiguous commitment to free speech is something Musk actually shares with founding father Thomas Jefferson, who's been lauded in schools across the U.S. for two centuries for his ideas about fundamental rights, including free speech. (In recent years, Jefferson's legacy has been rightfully re-assessed, largely because he bought and sold enslaved human beings, all while publicly opposing slavery.)